Well first of all I quitted unity since 2021 and used unreal engine instead.

Things is the policy was going to apply retrospectively, which mean old project also affecting by this.

Whether they're gonna keep this or change into something else, I don't care enough.

But just to be on safe side, I decided to deleted every projects I uploaded here which used unity to develop.

I also spent sometime unpublish my mobile games which I published years ago, even though they're not gaining much traffic in the first place.

This situation just got me paranoid and think of something dangerous like become John Wick in case I got sue unjustly or something along that line.

I don't want to open discord or any social media I have right now. Don't want to talk to anyone just to burden them with my own shortcoming. That's why I decided to post this blog instead. I'm sorry if you happen to come and read this, I just can't.

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Well what's next?

I'm actually working on a game project using UE4, hope to make it into commercial. I want to do as best as I could no matter if the result become another trash for others to smear or plainly ignored. I'm just gonna waste $100 on publishing and do everything in my power to do marketing.

The game system is technically finished, but I have to really finish the entire system instead of stay in the testing state.

Since I'm gonna use assets I got for free and they're few in number, I'd try to use the technique I thought about while planning this project.

I'm not sure when the game gonna be ready to play yet.

Even if the game is in the ready to publish stage, I'd delay the publishing for a few months to work on the marketing. I don't want to pressure myself too much, that's why I'll have to finish the game before start doing marketing.

The reason I'm willing to go this far is because I wanted to gain this important experiences. I never do so many stuffs that I need to do from now on.

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What's my game about?

The game is about a mage fighting monsters and beat the boss.

Basically level-based game which you could select the level and play as much as you wanted.

I'm thinking about adding difficulty challenges, but that's something I'll decide later on because I want to get the feel of my base game first.

The current plan for player is that the player has a preset skills to use. But I'm thinking if I want to have different presets to select or just put skills for the player to choose as preset.

Honestly I want to just make presets, because it's easier to balance.

There would be only so much levels since I have limited assets. But I'll try to make each levels not monotonous to compensate that.

I tried to make my own assets. Environment is one thing, but characters just took too long to make a simple one. So I decided to postpone the idea of making my own stuffs for now.

Right now I'm still not sure if the player controller is good or fun enough to play around. I'll need to do extensive test once I got the final first prototype. There is no "final_final_reallyFinal" since I'll start second prototype instead of the adjustments and balancing.

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I'm not intending to promoting myself or anything. This plan is just something I want to get out of my chest.

Honestly I'd been working on this same projects for over 10 projects. There are a bunch of adjustments took place between projects. I learnt something new along the way.

Actually the past projects are more like learning tools and workflow rather than real project.

If you ever play any of my games, you'll see the similarity in gameplay. It's the same actually.

The only thing that is different would be the player won't only shoot projectiles like I used to do.

Despite working so much, why the basic gameplay not change as much?

Simple, I focused on the back-end stuffs so much that I have nothing to show people.

When I tried to make something to show and gain some tracktion, it's ended up stressing me instead.

Then I realized that those people are at least a small studio. I'm a solo, so there is no way I could keep up with daily posting like that.

I think it's stupid to try and keep up with people that already optimized their workflow when I'm treading the new path that  there is no tutorial to help me.

The most I watch tutorials was just the conceptual stuffs. Folks explain about functions and stuffs. It's me that develop all those systems from the concepts I learnt.

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Actually I planned to take a rest for a few days after I ended the last development cycle.

But I ended up taking challenge to write a book before Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.0 hit.

I finished yesterday about half an hour before midnight. I only have to edit the calendar out of the files and export to make kindle bundle then publish.

Well I'll do after I get some sleep.

Though the quality is simply trash, but I think it's fun enough to read if you don't think too much about how bad my grammar and how bad I tell the story. Skipping the bad parts, the story is actually good...well it's like the return of the king with a bit more casual and comedic, but the world is burning and full of tragic.

It supposed to be better than this, but I lost motivation because I don't really like the story that much.

Funny enough that I wrote a novel that I'd say it's the best I've ever read, but I don't want to publish it because there are so many f*ed up scenes. Maybe I'm afraid that people will read my mind, so I published 2 interations of that novel instead....they're suck but still more fun than many novels I read though not on par with very fun novels out there.

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I have many abstract essay written

They're either some random ideas or something like how would I fix games that I played. I don't want to publish them either since they're thorough analysis and valuable data for game studios. I don't want to make someone gain edge without any reward on my side.

I'm awared that there are many YT gaming essay style. I could do that if I want to, but I don't want to waste my time there either.

Still, game development is new. Despite the flourish information about storytelling and other arts, we're still have a lot more room to improve.

I want to research on X-punk Y-punk etc etc, so that I could make my own Z-punk. Maybe DRAKOSEA-punk lolol

Sorry just a joke.

I'm rather interest in the world where we have sorcery instead of physics. Some may called them mage-punk or maybe high-fantasy.

But the aesthetic in my mind isn't futuristic or medieval. It's more akin to steampunk, but more on renaissance side than victorian.

I actually got firmed foundation of the sorcery universe. I'm just lacking the story I want to tell. Might as well try to portray a certain era or something? I don't know yet though.

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Last thing before I go, I want to talk a bit about my dream game.

One of reasons I'm starting to develop my own game is because of Ragnarok Online.

Actually I was super disappointed when I play RO for the first time.

Back then I didn't have internet or access to emulation version...well until later anyway.

I started with watching ads on TV, listen people and classmates talk about the game, and borrowed a guidebook that one of my classmate brought to school. Later on I bought my own guidebooks.

I read the guidebooks over 20 times, every single one of them. Before I got a chance to really play the game.

Maybe that's the reason many games nowadays seems to flopped because of overhyped. Yes, it's first hand experience about how I overhyped something and it's not as good as I thought.

Despite being bad game for me, I still played it quite a lot. I even tinkering around the emulated version.

The most memorable childhood for me would be when I wrote ideas about how to improve the game.

I even develop the concept of Ninja and Necromancer classes along with story of Amatsu. Though the result was much different than the official. My ninja was akin to assassin but with hybrid melee/range skills, I'd say my version is similar to guillotine cross, the 3rd class of assassin. Necromancer was similar to the one in Tree of Savior btw, they somehow nailed my ideas in that game.

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So how would I want to develop my dream game?

Basically if you ever play RO 2, the version with 3rd person perspective. You'd understand the basis of how I want the game to be.

If I have to say, I could develop my dream game as soon as I finished the base system for my next game(RPG elements). Which I won't develop in my current game.

It's not that ambitious or anything. The semi-open world is something I think it's good enough. I'd even go as far as it's big enough for a small indie studio. It's a bit much for solo like me, but thanks to unreal engine it's become possible. If I still use unity, I don't even see the ray of hope to develop my dream game.

There are several stages before my dream game become perfect btw.

The first milestone is to make something akin to Stardew Valley. Not the system though, I mean the map and loop stuffs.

I want to see how would I fare with the small open world before decide if I want to make such a huge game later on.

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Well there is also  another confession(?) to make.

I have several more games that I could called as dream game.

One of them is Wuxia style game with mundane activities. Think 9yin  AKA Age of Wushu

But since I don't plan to work on it that early or at all, I'm still at the abstract ideas stage.

Then the other one is the live-in cyberpunk 2077, though you'd see the combination of mods already achieve that. But I'd love to see my own version one day too.

The other one is rather peculiar because it's far from RPG, I want to make APEX but level-based PVE. Surely enough Titan Fall 2 already got something like that, but I don't like Titan in Titan Fall 2.

I also like mechs stuffs, but it's rare to see shooter games that I like the gameplay enough to want to make it myself. Other shooters I played are kinda mid and not there or something. APEX is just that fun y'know, the shooting not BR btw. I don't like BR.

Talking about mechs, I'd love to try Armour Core 6. But I don't have money, even if I buy it now my PC won't be able to play it properly. Waiting for GPU upgrade first tho.

The reason I'm interest in Armour Core 6 is because I used to play Front Mission a lot. The game allowed custom mechs and wait...maybe that game was Armour Core PS 1 ? I'm not sure, it's in Japanese.

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Alright, it's already 6AM and I need some sleep. So this blog post will end here.

I won't start working until I have enough of Phantom Liberty....well I'm sure I'll start working in a few days after I stopped burnout since I'm an addict to work.